Tuesday 4 December 2012

Why sheep aren't fussy eaters.




Neil watched the sheep munching the grass, they looked happy, contented. They weren’t fussy eaters, they ate everything in their paths, the grass, the buttercups the daisies. It’d be dark soon and Neil would need the torch to guide him safely back to the house. That scared him a little but excited him too. Two opposing thoughts comfortably balanced in his mind. On the one hand the fear of the darkness, the unknown lurking in the shadows with just torchlight and the thin crescent moon to illuminate the way and flush out the bogeymen. On the other the thrill of the darkness, the clear sky, the stars, the silence, the thrill of being scared. He knew his mum would scold him for coming home after dark and that excited him too.  He’d always been like that, doing things because he knew he’d get told off, like jumping in the fountain in town after his mum had told him not to, hiding the dice from the monopoly set, or breaking the greenhouse windows. He’d never hidden his guilt, never tried to cover his tracks and never tried to blame his sister like most older brothers do. In fact, unlike most brothers, he often took the blame when it was his sister’s fault, like when she had snapped her mum’s debit card clean in half. This wasn’t out of some chivalrous older brother duty, but because he enjoyed getting it in the neck. It was dark now, time to go home. He might like getting told off by his mum but he never wanted to freak her out. He loved her too much for that. 

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